My Year of the War eBook

With him I went to see what the ruins of Neuve Chapelle
looked like by daylight. The destruction was
not all the result of one bombardment, for the British
had been shelling Neuve Chapelle off and on all winter.
Of course, there is the old earthquake comparison.
All writers have used it. But it is quite too
feeble for Neuve Chapelle. An earthquake merely
shakes down houses. The shells had done a good
deal more than that. They had crushed the remains
of the houses as under the pestle-head in a mortar;
blown walls into dust; taken bricks from the east
side of the house over to the west and thrown them
back with another explosion. Neuve Chapelle had
been literally flailed with the high explosive projectiles
of the new British artillery, which the British had
to make after the war began in order to compete with
what the Germans already had; for poor, lone, wronged,
bullied Germany, quite unprepared—­Austria
with her fifty millions does not count—­was
fighting on the defensive against wicked, aggressive
enemies who were fully prepared. This explains
why she invaded France and took possession of towns
like Neuve Chapelle to defend her poor, unready people
from the French, who had been plotting and planning
“the day” when they would conquer the
Germans.

Bits of German equipment were mixed with ruins of
clocks and family pictures and household utensils.
I noticed a bicycle which had been cut in two, its
parts separated by twenty feet; one wheel was twisted
into a spool of wire, the other simply smashed.

Where was the man who had kept the shop with a few
letters of his name still visible on a splintered
bit of board? Where the children who had played
in the littered square in front of the church, with
its steeples and walls piles of stone that had crushed
the worshippers’ benches? Refugees somewhere
back of the British lines, working on the roads if
strong enough, helping France in any way they could,
not murmuring, even smiling, and praying for victory,
which would let them return to their homes and daily
duties. To their homes!

XVII
With The Guns

It is a war of explosions, from bombs thrown by hand
within ten yards of the enemy to shells thrown as
far as twenty miles and to mines laid under the enemy’s
trenches; a war of guns, from seventeen-inch down
to three-inch and machine-guns; a war of machinery,
with man still the pre-eminent machine.

Guns mark the limit of the danger zone. Their
screaming shells laugh at the sentries at the entrances
to towns and at cross-roads who demand passes of all
other travellers. Anyone who tried to keep out
of range of the guns would never get anywhere near
the front. It is all a matter of chance with
long odds or short odds, according to the neighbourhood
you are in. If shells come, they come without
warning and without ceremony. Nobody is afraid
of shells and everybody is—­at least, I
am.